It Makes Sense To Keep Players Inside Florida

Sports forum Pro

September 17, 1989|By Ken Sargeant, as told To Paul Owers

Florida is producing a tremendous amount of football talent. Players that got their start here are turning college programs around. It just makes sense to start a junior-college football system to keep the good players from getting away.

There are about 2,300 kids who graduate from the state's high schools each year who want to play college football. There are six colleges in Florida that have football, but only about a combined 150 scholarships are available.

Where do the rest of the kids go? They leave the state. I've sent hundreds of kids to California and Kansas to play junior-college football. If we have a little over 2,000 players, and when we multiply that by $5,000 for expenses over four years, the impact of these kids leaving is about $40 million.

As it stands now, Proposition 48 kids can't practice or go on trips with their teams, and they can lose interest very quickly. With a junior-college football system in Florida, those kids could play and get their grades up at the same time.

High-school seniors are at a very risky age. This would force them to mature and work on their study skills. They could stay close to home and get tutoring to prepare them for the four-year universities.

We've done marketing studies to help us in our proposal for a junior-college spring football league. We could have a 12-team league, with six teams in the north and six in the south.

We'd play a 10-game season and have a champion for the first half and one for the second half. The two top teams then would meet somewhere in the state - like Orlando - for the Super Bowl. The following week there would be an all-star game at some other site in the state.

In the spring, we're not competing with other sports - we'd be the only game in town. The TV people like that part the best. Could you see some guy sitting in his living room in North Dakota and watching a game in Daytona Beach or Fort Lauderdale, where it's 85 degrees and palm trees are all over the place? It would be great for tourism.

We'd set things up so it is a single-entity league. There would be one commissioner, one person handling the schedules, one person in charge of statistics and so on. That's the way we'd keep costs down.

People have got to realize that this would have social values. We'd be making a contribution to society. Most junior colleges lack spirit, and we could bring that back to the campuses.